"It's a surefire winner." -- Publishers Weekly Arthur Beauchamp is mortified. A biography of his early career as a lawyer paints him as a dissolute womanizer. So he sweats over a memoir that he hopes will set the record straight about a headline murder case he fought as a starry-eyed young lawyer in 1966. A trial that seemed bound to mark him as a pathetic loser.

The background: a young housemaid is violently sexually assaulted by her employer, a callous, vindictive multi-millionaire. She shoots him point blank and tearfully confesses to police. It's an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder -- or so it seems.

Haunted by having bungled his only previous murder case, Arthur is pressed into service by his firm to take on a sure loser. But the odds shift as the trial speeds through explosive twists and turns.

While writing his memoir, Arthur learns that it's not easy to raise a defence against his social gaffes and booze-induced sex scandals, especially as he runs afoul of the quirky characters who inhabit his supposedly idyllic Garibaldi Island.